The Cuban missile crisis and intelligence performance

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Downloaded by [Harvard College] at 08:23 18 September 2012 174 INTELLIGENCE AND THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS 'WHAT' QUESTIONS Owing to the various dimensions of imbalance that we discussed in our introductory essay, rather more questions about what actually happened in intelligence assessment and intelligence-policy interactions in the Cuban missile crisis arise with respect to the Soviet Union and Cuba than with respect to the United States. This is not to say that the American intelligence story is an open book - far from it - merely that there are relatively few aspects of the American story that remain utterly mysterious to outsiders. The single most important lacuna, of course, is signals intelligence (Sigint), encompassing communications intelligence (Comint) and electronic intelligence (Elint). Whether the United States had broken Soviet and Cuban codes - and if so, what of importance, if anything, they learned from eavesdropping on Soviets and Cubans - are some of the important pieces of information not yet on the public record. Neither do we have details of Soviet or Cuban Sigint, of course - but it is at least ironic that in the Soviet and Cuban cases, we have clear testimony to the effect that their capabilities were limited and not very useful. 2 We do not even have a general characterization of this sort with respect to American Sigint. As Raymond Garthoff notes, one direct reference to signals intelligence in a nowdeclassified document, coupled with judicious inferences about security deletions from other declassified documents, permits the surmise that Sigint was on balance more useful to the United States than was human intelligence (Humint), but less useful than photointelligence (Photint). 3 This would confirm the sense students of the missile crisis without security clearances have had (ourselves included) that the United States probably did benefit from signals intelligence, but that our understanding of the event would not change radically if the Sigint story could be told in full. But this, of course, remains to be seen. Although Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali have done a remarkable job of painting what was until very recently an almost entirely blank canvas, the Soviet intelligence picture is less complete. Three question in particular arise as a result of apparent inconsistencies between the accounts of Fursenko and Naftali on the one hand, and Domingo Amuchastegui on the other; a fourth question arises out of inconsistencies between the documentary and testimonial records. 1. Did the KGB consider an American invasion of Cuba imminent between the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban missile crisis, and if so, did they report this to Moscow? Fursenko and Naftali maintain that the KGB provided the Kremlin with raw information that could be construed in two quite different ways: suggesting both that there was great danger of an American invasion
Downloaded by [Harvard College] at 08:23 18 September 2012 INTELLIGENCE PERFORMANCE 175 of Cuba, and that such an invasion was unlikely. They suggest that the KGB hedged its reports, even at the price of blatant inconsistency, so as to be able to defend itself in the face of any contingency. 4 Nevertheless, the KGB was unable to reach a firm determination of American intentions toward Cuba, and never issued a clear warning that an invasion was imminent. The best and most insightful intelligence suggested that it was not. Aleksandr Feklisov, the KGB rezident in Washington, judged quite perceptively that Kennedy would have to be provoked into invading Cuba and would not willingly attack otherwise. 5 Fursenko and Naftali even imply that in judging an American attack unlikely, the KGB relied in part upon Cuban assessments. 6 Amuchastegui, however, reports that in 1961 Soviet intelligence began furnishing Cuba with 'constant, unambiguous, dire threat assessments ... for which there was no good-quality evidence'. 7 As Amuchastegui readily acknowledges, the lack of Cuban documents represents a major obstacle for scholars who wish to get to the bottom of issues such as this. It is entirely possible, however, that Fursenko and Naftali on the one hand, and Amuchastegui on the other, are both correct. The KGB may have deliberately skewed its reports to Cuba for some ulterior purpose. Indeed, this is what Amuchastegui reports Cuban intelligence eventually decided. The conclusion Cuban intelligence retrospectively drew from this - that Khrushchev must have conceived the nuclear deployment in 1961, and that he made use of falsified KGB threat assessments to prime Castro to accept it - is logically consistent with, though not logically entailed by, such dissimulation. Khrushchev may have had other goals in mind in pursuit of which it would have been useful to persuade Castro that the Cuban Revolution was in imminent danger from the United States. He might simply have sought to draw Cuba closer to the Soviet Union, for instance. 8 2. What did the Soviet intelligence community know about the plan to deploy missiles, and when did it know it? Fursenko and Naftali claim that Aleksandr Alekseev was the only KGB field officer who was briefed on the Cuban initiative. 9 Alekseev was summoned to Moscow in May, appointed ambassador, informed of the plan, and dispatched back to Cuba with a delegation led by alternate Presidium member Sharaf Rashidov and Deputy Minister of Defense (and Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Rocket Forces) Marshal S. S. Biryuzov, whose primary task was to sell the idea to Castro. 10 By all accounts, however, neither Georgi Bolshakov - the GRU's man in Washington — nor Aleksandr Feklisov knew of the deployment before President Kennedy announced it to the world on 22 October. Semichastny claims he found out about the deployment only when the KGB took custody of nuclear warheads aboard Soviet merchant ships in late
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The Cuban missile crisis and intelligence performance

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